Research that ends in a working fix.
Research, creative and policy usually come from three different firms. Aux Labs is a think-and-do tank that takes a problem from the research to the finished fix, under one roof.
BEHAVIORAL_INFRASTRUCTURE // AUSTIN, TX
Behavioral infrastructure.
Roads and power grids are infrastructure everyone can see. Trust, legitimacy and the sense that honesty pays are infrastructure too, and almost nobody maintains them. That is the field we work in: we measure where that layer is failing, then build the rules, defaults and incentives that repair it. We named the discipline in 2026, we teach it, and we want to meet the people already practicing it under other names.
What the field is, who named it, and where it comes from: The Field ->
Most people privately stopped believing the official story years ago. Each assumes everyone else still believes, so everyone keeps performing.
You cannot message your way out of that. Mechanisms can: rules, defaults, and incentives that make the honest move the easy move. We build them. The full argument is in the research.
“The next revolution will be psychological, not technological.”
— RORY SUTHERLAND, VICE CHAIRMAN, OGILVY UK · TEDxAMSTERDAM, 2012
THE REVOLUTION IS PSYCHOLOGICAL. THE TOOLS HAVE TO BE STRUCTURAL.
Share of U.S. adults who say they trust:
- The federal government (Pew)
- The press (Gallup)
- Each other (GSS)
- Big business (Gallup)
- Advertisers' honesty (Gallup)
SOURCES: PEW · GALLUP (MEDIA) · GSS VIA PEW · GALLUP (BUSINESS) · GALLUP (ADVERTISING) · SURGEON GENERAL (2023)
Where it’s being applied: three problems, right now.
Each file becomes a measurement, then a mechanism, and, when it earns it, a company.
A $40,000 measurement, sitting on top of billions.
The zipper merge fails for one unmeasured behavioral reason. Measuring it unlocks a bracketed $1.2B–$8.3B in annually recoverable loss. Nobody has measured it.
READ_AXL-WP-02 ->
Anyone can write a convincing proposal now.
AI made polished grant proposals free, and peer review couldn't tell good from great even before that. We designed a system that pays experts to attack proposals, so funders can finally measure whether their picks were right.
READ_AXL-WP-09 ->
AI-written filings are flooding the courts.
Courts grade themselves on how fast they clear cases, so the flood doesn't show up in their numbers. We built the measurement that catches what clearance rates miss.
READ_AXL-WP-07 ->
§ 04.00 // INSTRUMENT_01 · AXL-INS-01 · STATUS: TAKING CLIENTS
Is anyone still checking the AI?
Perpendiculum measures whether human oversight of your AI deployment still works, starting with the gap between what people say about the AI in the room and what they believe privately. It is anonymous by design: nobody, including us, can tell who said what.
[ SEE_HOW_PERPENDICULUM_WORKS ]Spec // What it reads
- 01Candor gap
- 02Trust calibration
- 03Decision drift
- 04Repair latency
- 05Escalation health
Privacy // By construction
No names, no free text, no small groups shown alone, and results only after the survey closes.
Bring us the problem.
Bring us a system you run: a queue, a policy, a schedule, a brand, a public you need to reach. Whether it's struggling or already working, we'll show you where it's losing trust and value, and what a better mechanism could do. If we're not the right fit, we'll say so in the meeting.
[ BOOK_A_MEETING ]
Imran Hafiz
Principal
Imran Hafiz spent seven years making culture for brands, and making it do something. At VIRTUE Worldwide, VICE's creative agency, he concepted and produced the Michelin program that put a new food van on the road for the Grand Central Food Program, briefed and starred in Natural Light's $1 million college debt relief campaign, and launched Lululemon's first men's line with the story of Ibn Ali Miller. He finished as publisher of VIRTUE Intelligence.
Then he did the research. In 2020 he started The Auxiliary as a civic response to the pandemic: COVID misinformation hackathons, public-health work with public housing in Georgia, and the peer-reviewed Jin-Hafiz Disinformation Index.
It started earlier. At fifteen, after 9/11 made him a target at school, he co-wrote The American Muslim Teenager's Handbook with his mother and sister, the first book by and for American Muslim youth. It won him the City of Phoenix MLK "Living the Dream" Award, its youngest recipient at the time, before he finished high school. He studied public policy at Duke.
Aux Labs puts both halves under one roof, so the people who find the answer are the people who make it land.